Marking the first time in years the American Ballet Theatre has performed in Italy, the show fused genres and eras, passing from the two-step to the pirouette, from Tchaikovsky to Frank Sinatra in a delicate, romantic, passionate and highly entertaining performance. Bolle interpreted roles that have made him famous in the US, like extracts from Romeo and Juliet, The Lady of the Camellias and The Leaves Are Fading. Bolle first danced with the ABT in 2007 as a guest artist, and then as a principal dancer for the company's 2009 spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Bolle also premiered for the very first time a piece created specifically for him by Massimiliano Volpini, that combines ballet with state-of-the-art digital effects.....

A review of Geneva Ballet’s "Romeo and Juliet" by Natasha Rogai in The South China Morning Post.

An intended coup de théâtre where Juliet walks onto the stage shrouded in a white sheet is unintentionally comic. Certainly, there is no other comedy - the piece is unrelievedly dark throughout, figuratively and, in the case of the lighting design, literally. This lack of contrast becomes wearing - even the love duets are strangely joyless. The fight scenes are so brutal that several audience members left.

The dance highlights, programmed by Emma Gladstone for Sadler’s Wells on the Waterfront stage were The Ballet Boyz’ The Talent 2013 – a sexy, striking celebration of masculine strength and energy – and Spanish sensation Rocio Molina’s de-constructed contemporary flamenco; passionate, boundary-blurring and intelligent. But let’s not get too deep with the old analysis – this is dance to be enjoyed. Whether you’re completely new to it or a wisened balletomane (and there were plenty of both, vastly raging in demographic) the festival dance experience is culturally indulgent and positively hedonistic.

A review of Festival del Sole's Ballet Gala by Janos Gereben for San Francisco Classical Voice.

Ballet San Jose dancers carried the burden of the evening's specialty, a couple of recovered excerpts from Michel Fokine's "lost" Paganini, to Rachmaninov's music, a rather awkward piece about the violinist (Damir Emric) playing his instrument, then not, having some unspecified but obviously agonizing problems, and eventually redeemed (somewhat) by Divine Genius (Amy Marie Briones) and eight — I counted them — Divine Spirits as the corps de ballet performed far from divinely. Keisuke Nakagoshi was the on-stage piano soloist.

An article on the early youth of George Balanchine by Elizabeth Kendall in The Oxford University Press' blog. (Hat tip to Jayne for forwarding the link!)

There were other boys to run around, play and swim with. In 1913, in fact, the whole Russian empire was having its last normal summer; the next summer, World War I would start, followed by the Russian Revolution that would upend all of life as it was then known. We can imagine the lithe little Georgi of 100 years ago celebrating summer, running among those tall pine trees, hiding from his mother and “auntie,” jumping into the clear lake and scrambling out onto a granite boulder, shouting with a gang of boy children (and his little blond brother tagging along)…all unaware that soon he would be dressed in a cadet’s uniform like the other student dancers and fitted to a strict regimentation that knew no summer or winter.

While the audience for “Bunheads” was smaller than that for other signature ABC Family shows — it attracted about 1.1 million viewers for each of its final eight episodes, compared to the more than 2 million who tune in for the teenage thriller “Pretty Little Liars” — its reviews were often outright raves, rarely seen at that network.